A Day without a Mom

A door slams in the semi-light of morning. He’s three and hasn’t gotten the message that he doesn’t need to slam the door every… single… time… he… leaves… his… room. Normally this annoys his Mom, but today she’s MIA. He wanders up to the bed trailing the smell of pee, looking for a snuggle, but there is no mommy. Normally this would trigger worry and crying, but today, on a day without a woman, without his mom, he’s going to be weirdly happy with this turn of events.

                He runs with his drunken-sailor gait to his sister’s room and they marvel over the lack of the mommy, but soon forget in a bout of unrestrained bed jumping. The Little Guy even joyfully yanks the fan chain repeatedly, something Mommy never allows, until the fan crashes down on the bed. The children could die here, ten minutes into a day without mommy, but what fun would that be. Instead, Little Guy’s drunken-sailor gait kicks in at the exact right moment and he knocks his sister from the bed in the nick of time. There are bruises and tears. They sing “Monkeys Jumping on the Bed” as they apply every band aid in the box to their heads, but they’ve lived through the great fan crash.

                Now Squidgamabob, the first born, the sister, Squidge for short, has to go to Kindergarten, so they play for two hours and then eat a poorly peeled banana and some candy for breakfast. By this time, the Little Guy’s soggy nighttime diaper is leaking and everything smells like pee. Squidge gets him dressed, forgets his underwear and puts his pants on backwards so the drawstring looks like a tail (ok, so this happens all the time, mommy present or not). Inspired by the Little Guy’s tail, they play kitties for another hour before heading to school, leaving the garage door open behind them. They don’t know how to shut it and what could happen?

                They wave at the friendly white van with blacked out windows trolling the neighborhood for loose children. When the man asks the children if they want to see his puppy, they fortunately remember they are pretending to be kitties and hiss at the man before jumping into the bushes. There they meet up with the other feral children of the neighborhood. Apparently the school is closed because most of the teachers are women. The mommies are also women, as it turns out. Who knew there were so many women in the world, quietly going about their work? But little minds have small attention spans and with a shift in the wind, they are all squirrels, building nests and collecting acorns, except Julia who only plays sports games.

One child finds that trash is more satisfying to collect than acorns and before long, all the children are collecting trash for treasures as they move in a pack along the run-off canal to the creek. They find some cool stuff, but Damian wins the game and becomes the pirate captain when he finds an old Halloween wig in the mud. Olivia becomes the substitute mom when she finds a practically brand new bottle of water and gives everyone a sip. The children glean much satisfaction from throwing half rotted acorns into the creek, until two fall from the high bank into the mucky water below. The children run into the woods to find big stick to pull their friends to safety, but are distracted by a raccoon with half its fur missing. It hisses and they all run away. The Little Guy is hungry at this point so Squidge takes him home, through the poison ivy patch, but they won’t know that until later.

Seeing the white van in the driveway, they hide out in the hoarder house yard across the street until it drives away with the couch sticking out of the back. But that’s OK, since Mom didn’t like that couch anyway. The Little Guy scratches at the bites from his brand new flea friends. The foxes sure do love the junk in the hoarder house yard and fleas love foxes.

Inside their house, each child picks out a can of soup. Chicken stars for her. Star Wars noodles for him. But only mommy has the magic ability to open a can. Squidge is like her mom and improvises with a hammer. Boom. Pasta stars on the ceiling. Yoda pasta on the cabinets. And since magical mommy is the only one who can reach the soup bowl, into the microwave the tin soup cans go. Little Guy helps by climbing up on the stove next to his sister, accidentally turning the gas knob as he goes. Now gas hissing into the room and metal sparking in the microwave could mean flambéed children and no need to worry about the stolen couch, but fortunately, a nudge of a foot activates the igniter too soon before any real gas has built up. Gas erupts into fire with a whoosh, and down come two singed children, soup and all. Squidge defeats the gas monster with a quick-thinking turn of the nob; she has helped make Mac & Cheese, after all. Turns out cold pasta isn’t too bad… once they pick the cat hair off.

Squidge decides to play on the computer downstairs (thankfully unnoticed by the robbers) while the Little Guy makes his post-lunch poop. After a half an hour of yelling ‘Someone, may you wipe my butt!” he gives up and does it himself. It’s not pretty. Meanwhile, the white van guys’ buddies have hacked the dreambox website and are chatting with Squidge on video chat. Squidge had to figure out how to remove mommy’s silly black tape from the video camera, but she’s learning fast. Upstairs Little Guy remembers to wash his hands but gets distracted by the soap squirty. The cat hops up on the sink for a drink, gets a taste of soap foam and freaks the ‘F out. Her violent exit launches the water bowl in an arcing cascade and with precision aim, floods the wall socket, tripping the circuit breaker, shutting down the wireless router downstairs (because old houses are wired like that) and saving Squidge from white van predators. Nice work kitty.

All over the hood, dads are coming home to their feral children and destroyed homes, but not Little Guy or Squidge’s dad. He’s away doing important things. He was supposed to call, but Little Guy played games on Mommy’s phone until the battery died. After a dinner of cheerios, the children pour a bath. Squidge manages to get the water turned on, but she forgot to turn it off and some water got out. It was only a little, but it rained in the downstairs bathroom… again. Mom is going to be mad, since it took the plumbers four trips to fix it the rain problem last time. The lights still weren’t working in the bathroom but, Squidge found ALL the glow sticks in the cabinet. It was the best bath ever. Stories by Squidge followed. It was a good thing she memorized so many of them since she still didn’t know how to read. The children decided to sleep together in Mommy’s bed and wait for her to come back.

Mom magically reappeared at midnight to carry each sleepy child back to bed, tucking them in with a kiss. She spent the next day scrubbing dried poop off the bathroom, scraping calcified pasta off the kitchen ceiling, filing police reports over the stolen property, flea bombing the house and listening to people on the news bash women who just want equal pay and to be appreciated for their contributions to society.

But the news didn’t waste much time on women’s rights, not when there were angry tweets to cover and a whole branch of the military exposing its ugly misogynist underbelly in an attempt to keep women out of its sacred masculine space. And her daughter comes home to tell her how a boy picked on her for dressing like her daddy for military day, because ‘girls don’t belong in the military.’

They start so young, pushing women out of the spaces of the world.

And women push back. She has the same conversation with her daughter she’s had before. Yes, girls can be Jedis. Yes, girls can be ship captains. Yes, girls can be president.

If they persist.

#InterNationalWomensDay #YetShePersisted #DayWithoutAWoman. #WomensHistoryMonth